William Congreve was an English playwright and poet of the Restoration period. He is known for his clever, satirical dialogue and influence on the comedy of manners style of that period. He was also a minor political figure in the British Whig Party.
John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera (1728), a ballad opera. The characters, including Captain Macheath and Polly Peachum, became household names.
Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was the eldest son of Lancelot Addison. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend Richard Steele, with whom he founded The Spectator magazine. His simple prose style marked the end of the mannerisms and conventional classical images of the 17th century.
Jacob Tonson, sometimes referred to as Jacob Tonson the Elder (1655–1736), was an eighteenth-century English bookseller and publisher.
The Spectator was a daily publication founded by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele in England, lasting from 1711 to 1712. Each "paper", or "number", was approximately 2,500 words long, and the original run consisted of 555 numbers, beginning on 1 March 1711. These were collected into seven volumes. The paper was revived without the involvement of Steele in 1714, appearing thrice weekly for six months, and these papers when collected formed the eighth volume. Eustace Budgell, a cousin of Addison's, and the poet John Hughes also contributed to the publication.
Charles Johnson was an English playwright, tavern keeper, and enemy of Alexander Pope's. He was a dedicated Whig who allied himself with the Duke of Marlborough, Colley Cibber, and those who rose in opposition to Queen Anne's Tory ministry of 1710–1714.
George Duckett, of Hartham House, Corsham, Wiltshire, was a British lawyer and Whig politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons for between 1705 and 1723. He was also a poet and author who was literary combatant of Alexander Pope.
Robert Wilks was a British actor and theatrical manager who was one of the leading managers of Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in its heyday of the 1710s. He was, with Colley Cibber and Thomas Doggett, one of the "triumvirate" of actor-managers that was denounced by Alexander Pope and caricatured by William Hogarth as leaders of the decline in theatrical standards and degradation of the stage's literary tradition.
Mary, Lady Steele was the second wife of Sir Richard Steele, whom she married in 1707.
Sir Thomas Culpeper, 3rd Baronet, also known as Colepeper, of Preston Hall, Aylesford, Kent was an English landowner and Whig politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1705 and 1723.
Sir Richard Ellys (1688?–1742), of Nocton, Lincolnshire and Bolton Street, Piccadilly, Westminster, was an English Whig politician who sat in the English House of Commons and British House of Commons between 1701 and 1734. He was a bibliophile, and theological writer.
George Sewell was an English physician and poet, known as a controversialist and hack writer.
The Tatler was a British literary and society journal begun by Richard Steele in 1709 and published for two years. It represented a new approach to journalism, featuring cultivated essays on contemporary manners, and established the pattern that would be copied in such British classics as Addison and Steele's The Spectator, Samuel Johnson's The Rambler and The Idler, and Goldsmith's Citizen of the World. The Tatler would also influence essayists as late as Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt. Addison and Steele liquidated The Tatler in order to make a fresh start with the similar Spectator, and the collected issues of Tatler are usually published in the same volume as the collected Spectator.
Martin Powell, was an Irish master puppeteer and puppet show impresario, who put on a repertoire of satirical and parodical marionette shows that invariably featured the Punch character. He drew audiences first at provincial towns such as Bath, then moving his venue to London. His theatre established itself in early 1710 at its first location, at the north end of St. Martin's Street intersected by Litchfield St., not quite in Covent Garden. But by 1711 he relocated the theatre to the galleries of Covent Garden, at Little Piazza, opposite St. Paul's Church.
Richard Vaughan MP of Derwydd, Carmarthenshire was a Welsh lawyer and Whig politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons for nearly 40 years from 1685 to 1724.
Sir James Worsley 5th Baronet (1672–1756) of Pylewell Park, Hampshire was a British landowner and politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1696 and 1741. He tended to support whichever administration was in power.
Thomas Pelham (c.1678–1759) was an English politician, a member of the Pelham family of Sussex. Returned on the family's electoral interest at Lewes in 1705, he provided a reliable Whig vote in the House of Commons, and a rather more sporadic attendance on the Board of Trade. Due to his neglect of the family electoral interest, he was nearly turned out in the 1734 election, and stood down in favor of his eldest son at the next election in 1741.
Sir Thomas Clarke, of Brickendon, Hertfordshire, was a British lawyer and Whig politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1705 and 1741.
John Hedworth (1683–1747) ), of Chester Deanery, Durham, was a British colliery owner and politician who sat in the House of Commons for 34 years from 1713 to 1747.
John Mills (c.1670–1736) was a British stage actor. A long-standing part of the Drury Lane company from 1695 until his death, he appeared in both comedies and tragedies. His wife Margaret Mills was an actress, and his son William Mills also became an actor at Drury Lane.
